


if there's no one beside you

by WashiEaglewings



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, KH3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 21:17:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14902181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WashiEaglewings/pseuds/WashiEaglewings
Summary: “I don’t know what you want from me.”“I’m still trying to decide.”Aqua and Xemnas communicate during her stint through the Realm of Darkness.





	if there's no one beside you

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS UNBETAED AND PARTS OF IT ARE OLD AND IT'S ALL PROBABLY A LITTLE MESSY BUT I'M STILL FLYING HIGH FROM THE MICROSOFT TRAILER OKAY

At some point—after what should be years of walking with sleeplessness, without hunger, with no other sound but her ragged breaths and the screeches of monsters—Aqua realizes that time might be passing differently down here than in the Realm of Light.

It happens in a rare moment of tranquility, where her barriers ripple in the light of the glowing rocks common in the Realm of Darkness. She had tumbled on a memory of Ven, thinking himself a barber, “helping” her cut her hair. She’s fought more monsters than she can count but her hair hasn’t grown. Nothing has changed about her except a few new scars on her shoulders.

Her body doesn't tire or need but her mind does, so she closes her eyes and breathes deeply the way Eraqus taught her. She thinks of Radiant Garden, and the fields of wildflowers… no, the flowers had been contained, boxes in window sills. Or had that been Snow White’s world? No, that detail doesn’t matter. Just the flowers, blue and pink and green. They had swayed in the sun… if she concentrates—

“ _Can you hear me?_ ”

Aqua jolts up, one hand outstretched and Master’s Defender held tight in front of her with the other. She doesn't have a name or a face to match the rumbling voice echoing in her head; she turns around, expecting to see another phantom, but there are only silent cave walls to greet her. Her arms are tingling—no, just the skin right underneath her pauldrons, which feel so empty without her armor housed magically inside. “Who are you?” she whispers, because she’s already learned it’s best to keep quiet here.

“ _Only a nobody,_ ” the voice says. “ _At least… compared to you,_ Master _Aqua._ ”

She bares her teeth to nothing but shadows. “How do you—”

“ _You’re not ready to know._ ”

Undoubtedly male, she decides, with that low bass and that _arrogance_. He doesn't elaborate and her head is silent again. She turns her head back and forth. Nothing appears to fight, but her hand flexes on Master’s Defender anyway; the tip of the blade glows a bright yellow, the air rippling with unspent electricity. She surprises herself by saying, “Doesn't seem fair that you know my name without me knowing yours.”

The voice chuckles, and something curdles in Aqua’s gut. “ _I've learned that nothing is fair._ ”

She grits her teeth and scoffs. “So what are you?”

And there—laughter, but it rings false and unpracticed in her head. “ _I’ve already told you._ ”

Moments pass. And then more. She counts her breaths to pass the time, and when sixty have passed and there’s no new remark Aqua begins walking again. She's heard stranger things in her head while walking through the Realm of Darkness; there's even a part of her that delights in the change from her own doubts and Mickey screaming her name.

She can't afford distractions if she's going to get out of here.

+

And yet.

She’s found herself talking more and more to herself—pointing out strange patterns in the light, or shadows dancing away from Master Defender’s illuminated tip. Aqua knows it’s not a normal thing that _normal_ people do, not this frequently or desperately. She doesn’t twist her voice or try to be two people at once, which should be a good thing, but it clouds her judgment.

Aqua doesn't know she's left herself open until she feels the claws burying themselves into her belly; she'd been worlds away and left herself open and ripe for cleaving. The humanesque monster disappears with a quiet screech and a puff of smoke but she feels no pride in the clean kill. It’s all she can do to place her wards and slump down against the nearest pillar, trying very hard to breathe as her blood spills on the slick stone.

Curaga takes away the immediate pain and most of the shock, but it’s a battle spell meant to dull her nerves and allow her to keep fighting. It only takes a thought to summon the Hi-Potion from her inventory and place it in her hand; she drinks greedily, choking past the bitter taste, and sets the empty bottle aside.

She wants warm hands in her hair, soothing voices to tell her that things will be alright—she can imagine phantoms of them, but it's not enough.

“ _What do you know about seven and thirteen?_ ”

One moment, her own voice and thoughts tumble over each other to keep herself alert and awake; the next, her head is uncomfortably full and her arms are itching. “They add up to twenty,” Aqua murmurs, curling into herself. She presses her hand against the wound and whimpers for another Hi-Potion, which she’d miraculously found on the ground maybe-miles ago.

(Which begs the question: how did such a valuable item find its way down here? Had someone brought it down? And if they had, where are they now?)

His chuckle is… not warm, she decides. It _should_ be, from the timbre of his voice, but the sound falls in on itself and tumbles away into silence. “ _I_ _n the old histories it is said that a powerful clash between seven lights and thirteen darknesses destroyed the world as they knew it. Small fragments survived in the hearts of children. Have you heard this story?_ ”

She has to force herself to sit down and remember things now. Not the important things that will keep her head above water, those she has learned with her muscles, but the smaller memories that make her Aqua—recipes she used to know like the back of her hand, the way Terra’s eyebrows pinched together when he was lost in thought, Ven’s third-favorite joke. History lessons had been the first to fade in all this; if she had heard this story before, she doesn’t remember it now.

“ _I wonder if they need to be pure,_ ” the voice says. “ _But people’s darknesses manifest in such different ways… hatred, sorrow, jealousy. I wonder if they must be united in origin as well as purpose._ ”

“I don’t understand,” she hisses, and pinches flaps of skin together. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

She breathes another Curaga and looks down, satisfied to see only an angry red line where there was once an open gash. It’s childish, but she wants to show off her work—even if the only ones available to praise her for the fix are the things who had broken her in the first place.

“ _I’m still trying to decide_.”

+

Despite her horror that worlds she’d visited had fallen into darkness, she’s grateful for a change of scenery. The worlds have kept some memories alive, but twisted them into darker versions: Ven in Snow White’s coffin, Terra silent and lifeless on Cinderella’s steps, her own shadow nearly impaling her with a sword.

 _I messed up. Xehanort is part of me_ — _now he's using me to get to Ven._

Terra had been there, warning her. And Xehanort, not bowing over that monstrosity of a Keyblade, but as Terra’s silver-haired doppelgänger, fighting for control. Several times she had wondered if he was powerful enough to find her through this darkness.

“ _He is only human._ ”

He appears out of nowhere in her mind, when the air is still and there are no Heartless. Any relief she might have about his statement—Xehanort is powerful but he isn’t a _god_ —is wiped away by the reappearance of her infrequent visitor, the dread that settles in when she realizes she isn't _alarmed_ by him anymore. Not even Mickey’s bright presence is enough to drive him away, it seems. Or maybe he’s waited for this moment, when Mickey has slipped into meditation. The darkness is getting to him, too, she can tell by his deepening frown and cryptic words. She can hardly fault him for needing to take a brief respite with Star Seeker sprawled over his lap.

Exhaustion is starting to seep into her bones, in the cracks of her heart, to the point where she has no magical means to block the voice out.

So she sings, pulling at her rejuvenated memory for songs she’d sung to Ventus when he’d first arrived in the Land of Departure.

“ _It was foolish to overlook you_ ,” he says cryptically. “ _Trapped in an everlasting darkness and yet… here you are, still with enough light to sing._ ”

The melody is easy; it’s the words she stumbles over. “Drip drip drop, when the sky is cloudy,” she murmurs, twitching a beat on Master’s Defender’s hilt. There’s been no trace of a body to match the voice echoing in her head, no sign that she might not be imagining this whole thing. “Your pretty music,” she begins, but pauses. How did the rest of the line go? “Your pretty music—”

“ _You come along with a song right away, come with your beautiful music._ ” He doesn't sing the lyric, but she recognizes it, knows it’s correct. She looks up, maybe expecting to meet a face instead of more shadows, but there’s nothing there. “ _He would stand by a door and watch you and Ventus. He never joined in. One night there was a thunderstorm..._ ”

It had been the loudest and brightest she’d ever seen in the Land of Departure. Ventus had dissolved in her arms, inconsolable as he sobbed into the crook of her neck. She’d tried every song she could think of, had held him close to her and rocked him. Nothing had worked. Only Terra, who’d been drawn to them by some invisible string, had been able to calm him—he’d wrapped his arms around the two of them and had gone into vivid detail about the science behind the flashes of light that turned her bedroom bright white, droning on and on until Ventus had finally fallen asleep.

She’s lost so many of these tiny memories down here; the fact that she can remember this one fills her with a quiet, bright delight. But it’s too intimate a memory for Xehanort, who she’d only met twice before everything went to hell. Tears bite mercilessly behind her eyes; she stiffens her lip, breathes shakily through her mouth, to keep them from falling. “How did you know that?”

“ _It would take too much time to explain._ ”

Her laughter is harsh. Aqua has nothing _but_ time right now. “What are you,” she repeats, speaking around the lump in her throat.

“ _Not Terra. Not in the way that matters to you._ ”

She doesn’t have a chance to respond before Mickey stirs back to life. He meets her with a smile, his eyes sleepy but kind; that fades the longer he looks at her. Mickey gets to his feet with a fluidity that shouldn’t surprise her anymore after seeing him in battle, one hand cautiously hovering over her knee. “Did something happen while I was sleepin’?”

It takes her too long to answer, and even then her “No” is sluggish and soft. She looks up and around her, doesn't flinch when Master Defender digs so deeply into her skin to draw blood. “Are you ready to go? We can stay here longer if you need to.”

He shakes his head. “No. It’s strange, but I’m not feelin’ very tired.” He steps forward, thinks for a moment, then turns to her with his palm outstretched. “We’ll get through this together, Aqua.”

Her smile isn’t a fair match to his kind gesture, but she offers it. Mickey’s hand is warm and solid and _real_ as he guides her down the slope, through silence and finally another horde of Heartless. When the dust settles and she catches her breath, looking out on their temporary battlefield lit green by Mickey’s Curaga, she can hear laughter in her head.

It isn’t her own.

+

The Destiny Islands are restored without fanfare, shimmering with golden light. Aqua is not saved with them.

She spends a long time debating whether or not to lose it; there aren’t any Heartless here to attack her, no Mickey to watch her. Is it possible that she’s just too tired to cry, to do anything more than lay on the beach and pretend the sunlight is warm on her face and imagine Terra and Ven on either side of her? Aqua lets her guard down just enough to pretend her heart is held together by more than faith, and brings it right back up as she falls into darkness.

Nothing has changed about the Realm of Darkness; if anything it seems bleaker after the false sun- and starlight of Destiny Islands. There are cliffs on either side of her, with dimly-glowing rocks marking her path forward. The colors change from blue to an almost dusky-purple, and the fact that there’s _change_ in her surroundings is enough to still her to silent observation.

“ _Behind you._ ”

She jumps clumsily to the side just before a monster— _Heartless_ , she reminds herself—leaps toward her. That second of warning is the difference between its claws scraping her cheek or tearing out her heart. She destroys the Shadow with one fluid motion, watches the wisps of darkness fade into nothingness. No more come to take its place.

If she focuses she can remember the sand she'd laid on, the pull of it through the gaps of her fingers. There is nothing but cold unyielding stone here, sapping any warmth she’d pretended she had. Fire isn’t enough, though she summons a small flame that dissipates in her hand. She’s cold, like a ghost. She feels as real as one.

No. Mickey had been there, his hand solid and steady in hers; he’d talked to her and fought right beside her. He’ll come back, if her light is strong enough to follow. If she keeps it burning.

One shaking hand comes back to grip her Wayfinder, newly dented in that last chaotic fight—one edge has crumpled into the glass, no longer forming the sharp outline she'd spent so much time perfecting. The glass pane holds by sheer determination; Aqua notes this with a smile, finds it fitting.

“Just hold on,” she says, only half to the Wayfinder.

Does she stay put in case Mickey comes searching for her? Does she move on and meet him in the middle? She's torn, bouncing on her heels. There is no warm sunlight to throw the stocky tiny bodies of the Heartless into full view, no explosion of golden sparks to light her path. But a swarm of round Heartless suddenly appear, forcing her back down the long and winding road.

She keeps walking. Keeps fighting.

Maybe seeing the sun and dipping her toes in the surf has spoiled her, made her impatient and careless. The memory of it is just so much more immediate than starlit nights in the Land of Departure, of even Terra and Ven smiling wide at a joke in the sunlight. What should have been encouragement has turned into poison— _what if that's the last time you feel the sun? what if you die here?_

She tries not to think about it, so instead she fights Heartless. And meditates. Once in a while she holds her Wayfinder in her hands and prays for Mickey to come back, or a sliver of sun. And Aqua repeats this over and over again, until she begins to wonder if there was ever life before this monotonous wandering. But then she hears a noise and Master’s Defender flares back into her hand, and she remembers.

If she ever escapes—she’s too tired for _when_ —and people ask her what the worst thing about her experience was, she say it’s the monotony. Now that the worlds have been restored there are no flowers to smell or mirrors to fall into. This should please her, should make her happy, but there’s a horrible selfish part of her that wishes for something other than endless stone walkways and the crystals glowing that same awful blue. She doesn’t even see Terra’s and Ven’s shadows anymore.

Suddenly the air stills, and in her mind she hears that now-familiar voice greet her with a soft, “ _I_ _still marvel at your strength of heart, to remain down here for so long._ ”

And she doesn’t push it away with snippets of song, or even summon Master’s Defender. “How long has it been?”

It’s a rhetorical question; they don’t trade information with each other, not the incriminating kind. But he hums and says, “ _Since we last spoke? I only had nine. Then I had all. Now I have none but myself, thanks to that meddling boy._ ”

He says it as though she’s supposed to understand. She doesn’t. But the last three words pique her interest, and she looks up despite knowing she’ll see nothing. “Not Terra, or Ven?”

“ _No._ ”

Her blade is just a thought away from materializing, but she still keeps her hands empty—clenched, with her fingernails digging into her palm, but weaponless. “Why do you keep following me?”

That chuckle again. “ _Do you want me to leave?_ ”

The correct answer is on her tongue. She knows what to say, and how to say it, and how to pull out Master’s Defender to drive the point home. But she doesn’t say anything. Aqua has no way of knowing how long it’s been since she was separated from Mickey; she doesn’t remember what it was like to not be lonely. “No.”

“ _I’ll have to._ ”

Right. Foolish, to expect help from someone she can’t see.

“If you knew how to help me, would you?”

There’s a long pause. She continues walking. And then, without warning: “ _Go left._ ”

There’s a fork in the road. She hadn’t even bothered contemplating turning onto the narrow strip jutting off from the main path. But there’s something new in his command, and she’s tired down to her bones and the very corners of her heart. So she walks, and fights Heartless, and walks some more until stone gives way to sand. Until she finds moonlight rippling on the sea.

Until there’s a man in a dark robe sitting down just feet away from her.

For one brilliant moment she thinks that this is it, she’s finally going to meet the owner of the voice who has been frustrating her and guiding her all this time. But she steps toward him and he speaks, and though his voice is also deep it isn’t _the one._

But it’s companionship, and she drinks it in until she thinks she could be thirsty again.

They don’t move from that spot. Something keeps the Heartless away from the dark shore, and Aqua has no intention of luring them in for a fight. It’s a pale echo of Destiny Islands before it falls, but she sits in the sand and breathes, to the point where maybe if her body was as tired as her mind she might sleep. She doesn’t, of course. But it’s a safe place, and she _could_. Possibility is just as treasured as reality.

The man doesn’t remember much of who he is, only events and names. Too much time had passed, but he very clearly remembers one name above all else. Sora—hadn’t Mickey said something about a Sora? Just the once. And now a second time. Twice someone else had saved the worlds and she had been… it’s been _twelve years._

She wants to apologize to a boy she’s only met once, on a beach so unlike this one that it stings. Instead she says his name, and cries for the first time since falling down.

Far, far down the beach, a door appears.

+

“ _Will you be ready for the battle ahead?_ ”

She jolts out of her not-quite-slumber, the waves lapping at her boots. Her breathing comes in quick bursts, like her heart’s about to beat itself out of her chest. Aqua brings one hand up to wipe the sweat from her brow. It’s been so long since she’s heard that voice; she had thought she’d escaped him. “I don’t understand.”

She turns to the ocean, which laps blue and black against the silver shore; she turns to the rock where her strange companion had been sitting when she’d found him, which stands stoic and lonely in the corner of her eye. And though she knows she should be worried, because her new friend is defenseless and the monsters are cruel here, she can’t help but think, _left again._

Something shimmers in the air. She’s not alone.

Aqua launches upward, summoning Master’s Defender. Her hand feels incomplete without it there, too full with it. The end glows a fierce copper, and she feels the heat in her belly contract before expanding—

She flicks the end up at the last second, changing the Firaga from a lesson to a warning. It explodes high above her intended target, bursting red and separating the black hooded figure from the surrounding darkness. The silhouette approaches, not even flinching as the embers fall on its shoulders.

“You should know better than to sneak up on me,” Aqua says, just lowering the Keyblade. “And what were you even doing by yourself, what did… you…?”

He doesn’t stop; he diverts away from her to stand in the surf, letting the foam wash over the ends of his robes. Aqua’s grip on Master’s Defender tightens. She moves—not to get close to him, but to try to see his face, see _something_ other than black.

“You think I would hurt you here?”

It’s not as strange as she had thought it’d be, hearing his voice aloud instead of in her mind. Her breath catches as she stills, halfway between where she’d been sleeping and the frothing shore.

“The battle of the seven and thirteen is nigh,” the voice—the _man—_ says, looking down at his gloved hand. A swirl of darkness blooms behind him, obscuring the silver beach. “After years, we’re beginning to rebuild… all we need is the final piece. It’s time to take you home.”

There’s no way to see his face underneath his hood, no way to know for sure. _May your heart be your guiding key._ Friend or foe? If he would just say something to her—sing Ventus’s song, give her a memory, give her _something_ …

“Why now?” she asks.

“You would wait longer?” he asks, and turns to face her. The moon is shining, bouncing off the edges of his coat: broad shoulders, tall frame. Familiar… “When you’ve been left behind so often?”

“I haven’t…”

“You sacrifice so much of yourself for your friends, and yet they cannot extend that same courtesy to you. Does that make them horrible friends… or you foolish, for giving so much for them?”

Her hand is shaking as it lifts Master’s Defender into the air, the tip pointed straight for that dark shadow of a face. “That’s enough! You’ve—”

“I’ve been watching you, remember? You don’t need to suffer more than you have been.”

She fires a Firaga—it explodes against an invisible wall, throwing back his hood. Long silver hair spills over his shoulders. He chuckles, then turns to face her—

His smile does not belong there because it’s wrong and twisted and because she knows, immediately, that it isn’t his, that this is—

“Enough of him,” says the man with Terra’s face, “to matter.”

Bile rises in her throat but she swallows it down, somehow, though all she wants to do right now is throw up, run away, run through that damn corridor.

“And now you are here, and Ventus is asleep—”

“Don’t you say his name,” she hisses.

“Ventus,” he repeats, and she doesn’t know what’s worse: that he’s taunting her, or that his face is so expressionless. “He’s waiting for you, wondering what he did to be left alone so long.”

“Enough…” she whispers.

“Would you keep him waiting longer than he needed to? Don’t you want to see him again?”

She says nothing. Just charges with Master’s Defender sparking electricity. The man with Terra’s face only has enough time to draw two shining weapons before they crash.

She feels every blow and twist in real-time—her senses don’t blur, her mind doesn’t go elsewhere. Back, forth, block, Firaga, strike, Thundaga, Curaga Curaga _Curaga_ , they trade blows like insults. He’s too fast to be Terra, blends too much into the shadows and strikes like a cobra. Her barriers shatter more than they hold; rocks dig into her palms as she cartwheels, lining the sand with red.

She’s losing energy, losing time, losing _patience_ , but if this fucker would just _stand still—_

He strikes down on her right shoulder and she knows, even before she hits the ground, that it’s over. Even a tremor sends full spasms down her back; she cries out, gasping one Curaga, as a bleeding blade comes down to hover just a breath away from her throat.

The man who isn’t Terra looms over her, eyes narrowed. “You grew soft,” he murmurs. “A few pointed words were enough to bring you down? Your friends would be ashamed.”

She’s lying useless on a beach and there’s darkness flickering at the edges of her field of vision. Ashamed… not her friends. Devastated for her. Right? Green flickers for one moment, but the pain in her shoulder doesn’t subside. Her grip on Master’s Defender grows weaker. She glances over to the shore, where the false moon hangs in the starless sky. So unlike the sky she’d shared with Terra and Ven so many years ago, and yet…

“I can heal you,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt you further.”

She laughs bitterly. “You didn’t have to strike back.”

“Is this what darkness does to a heart with so much light?” he muses. He’d been too close to darkness for her to notice him when he’d arrived, if she’d just attacked him...  “Or did you not have as much to begin with, and this is you showing your true self?”

Aqua glances over at Master’s Defender, and laughs softly. She feels him watching her, even around the red of his blade at her throat. No room to twist around, and her barrier would only buy a half-move’s worth of time. She can only do so much, fight so long.

“You only need to close your eyes,” he says, and it’s almost… soothing. Tempting. To give up, do nothing.

But if she did nothing… what would happen to Ventus? To Terra?

_Just use this key and lock this land away._

_Use this key..._

She winces as she grabs hold of Master’s Defender. It burns in her palm, like it knows what she’s about to do. Keyblades don’t speak with their masters in words, but she feels it—so unlike Stormfall, who knew what she was going to do before she did it. Master’s Defender protests because it knows, because this has happened before.

“I’m sorry, Master,” she says, and lets Master’s Defender fade from her hand.

She half-remembers doing this, years ago, falling into darkness with Terra in her arms. Remembers severing the mental bond between herself and Stormfall, feeling that warmth drain from her fingers. She thinks of sunlight and the breeze, thinks of Mickey, thinks of the boys… she can’t remember their names, but she remembers their faces. Kind eyes, soft smiles, so much like her boys.

And she remembers a spell, one she put on a necklace… who had she done that for? It would go somewhere safe, she thinks she did that right. And she would be...

The man above her doesn’t know what she’s done. She doesn’t think. She doesn’t know. But Aqua closes her eyes and listens to the waves against the shore, the way she had when Destiny Islands returned to the Realm of Light.

There is no glimmering light.

She falls regardless.

+

There’s a moment, after, when she hears footsteps on the beach, that she wonders if she did the right thing.

There’s enough _her_ left—she feels him in her heart, feels bits of herself get tucked away into the shadows. She’s noticing and _smelling_ things she doesn’t remember making notes of in her years down here. Would the Heartless think to attack her now? Because she was so dangerous, or because she smelled like one of them?

There isn’t enough in her to worry, not anymore.

She knows the sound of Keyblades materializing, knows the slice of it against her skin. Doesn’t know where from, just… knows. Doesn’t know how to move, or why she moves, just does. She flinches when the dark blade breaks under her smoking hands, feels that power ripple across the beach. Feels the impact of another blade against her back. She takes that blade too, tosses it and traps its wielder in red-tinted darkness.

The metal of it is cold in her hands, silent and still. It doesn’t matter.

“Is that…?”

The smoke around and _of_ her dissipates, and she falls a little deeper into slumber. It’s her body but she isn’t in control, and she’s too tired to fight against it anymore. She wants sleep. Craves it, more than anything.

“Mickey…”

The tone she uses and the face she makes, they’re not her own—

“You’re too late.”

But the words are.

They're the last bit of her that remains, echoing on that beach.

**Author's Note:**

> Master's Defender being sacrificed to keep Ven safe was used lovingly and with permission from aera @bladecharge
> 
> Come scream with me on tumblr and twitter @awakingdormancy!


End file.
